G.K. Warren: The Explorer of Nebraska Territory
“Here we were met by a very large force of the Dakotas… some of them were for attacking us immediately… to have continued on then would have been an act for which certain death would have been inflicted.” - Gouverneur Kemble Warren, 1857
As William Shakespeare’s Romeo famously asked, “What’s in a name?” In the Bear Lodge Mountains of northeast Wyoming, peaks are known as Inyan Kara (The Stone Mountain), Sundance, Sheep’s Nose, Medicine Flat, The Grandmothers (Missouri Buttes), Warren Peak, and Matȟó Thípila (Devils Tower). These names are powerful. They remind us of the Native American connection to the land, and they are a window into the history of the land. One need only look at the controversy around the name “Devils Tower” as evidence of their importance.1 Among the peaks in this mountain range, most have names given to them by the Native Americans while retaining their English equivalents. However, there is one peak on the preceding list that stands apart with the name of an American explorer, Warren Peak.2 This article focuses on the namesake for Warren Peak, Gouverneur Kemble Warren, and his role in opening the Black Hills and Bear Lodge to white American exploration.3
Gouverneur K. Warren, the Explorer of Nebraska
The “Explorer of Nebraska”—no small title considering the Nebraska that Warren explored was not a small cornbelt from Lincoln to Omaha on Interstate 80. As big as the sky itself, the Nebraska Territory of the 1850s incorporated most, if not all, of what is now Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming. Stretching from the Missouri River in the east to the Continental Divide in the west, and north-south from Canada to Kansas, this vast territory existed as the domain of Native Americans and the occasional white fur trader.
Born in Cold Spring, New York, Gouverneur Kemble Warren was named after family friend Congressman Gouverneur Kemble. The fourth of 12 children, Warren attended West Point, graduating second in his class in 1850. He studied engineering—a subject that ran in the family, as Warren’s sister, Emily Warren Roebling, helped engineer the Brooklyn Bridge—and he worked for the Army as a topographer and railroad surveyor.
1855 – With Harney at Blue Water
Warren’s work as a surveyor and his knowledge of topography made him a valuable commodity to the frontier Army. In 1855, Warren received orders to accompany General William S. Harney’s Sioux Expedition as topographical engineer. As a punitive expedition, Harney was to avenge the Grattan Fight of August 1854.4
Initially, Harney ordered Lt. Warren to Fort Pierre (in present-day central South Dakota) to survey the Nebraska Territory in that region. Traveling to the fort on the Missouri River steamboat Clara from June to July 1855, Warren noted the difficult time the vessel had while navigating its way up the Missouri. While sandbars, strong currents, and a shallow bottom made the journey difficult at times, the Clara managed to reach its destination. From Fort Pierre, Warren surveyed the land upriver of the remote outpost to the “mouth of the Shyenne [sic]” River.5
Fearing he was wasting his time and not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to join Harney—who was assembling his forces at Fort Kearny (in current south-central Nebraska) on the Platte—for his campaign, Warren devised a bold course of action. With the difficult trip of the Clara upriver in mind and not wanting to waste time by taking another steamboat down river, Warren proposed making his way overland—260 miles as the crow flies—from Fort Pierre to Fort Kearny. Warren’s superiors at Fort Pierre thought the idea “rash” and the effort of crossing Brulé, Ponca, and Pawnee territories through the Sand Hills would mean Warren’s “certain destruction.”6 Warren, however, insisted and made his way south without spotting a single Native American, arriving at Fort Kearny on August 22, 1855.
Harney’s expedition left Fort Kearny two days later, on August 24, heading westward up the Great Platte River Road. Harney found the Brulé Sioux at Ash Hollow where Blue Creek meets the North Platte River.7 In the ensuing Battle of Ash Hollow (also known as the Battle of Blue Water Creek or Harney’s Massacre), Harney’s men killed 86 Native Americans and 70 women and children were captured. Harney lost 27 men.
A firefight brings out the best and worst in humanity. In the case of Warren, it brought out his best. He wrote the scenes of the battle were “heart-rending,” as “women and children [were] crying and moaning, horribly mangled by bullets.” In the aftermath, he found one young girl, about 12-years-old, laying head down in a ravine, apparently dead. Upon closer inspection, the girl was still breathing, and Warren treated her wounds and ordered a shelter made to keep the hot sun off her. Warren’s chivalry did not go unnoticed, and the Natives bestowed the name “the good Lieutenant” upon him.8
After the Battle of Ash Hollow, Warren continued west with Harney to Fort Laramie, reaching that queen of posts on September 16, 1855. From Fort Laramie, they traveled to Fort Pierre on the Fort Pierre-Fort Laramie Trail. After reaching Fort Pierre in late October 1855, Harney and his men remained while Warren pressed on eastward bound for Washington, DC. Warren reached the Big Sioux River and then Sioux City, Iowa, in early November 1855. Wintering in Washington, he wrote his report to Congress and planned for a new expedition.
1856 – To the Powder River
In April 1856, Warren left St. Louis aboard the steamship Genoa for his return to the west. Accompanying him were topographers W.H. Hutton, J.H. Snowden, and geologist F.V. Hayden.9 The Genoa ran into heavy currents upstream of the mouth of the James River (near Yankton, SD). Growing impatient, Warren and his companions set out on foot for Fort Lookout (also called Fort Kiowa, near today’s Chamberlin, SD).
The name Fort Lookout proved a bit of a misnomer to Warren and his men. Approaching from the opposite bank of the Missouri River, they were unable to make contact with the post. With no way to communicate across the river, Warren and his men could not secure a ferry across. As a result, and with dwindling supplies, they elected to make a forced march to Fort Pierre. After three days of hard travel, they arrived at Fort Pierre with blistered feet to find General Harney meeting with a gathering of Native Americans. The Indians agreed to surrender the men who had kille Lt. Grattan nearly two years earlier. While this truce brought an immediate end to the affair, unfortunately for the history of the American West, the bad blood created by the Grattan Massacre and Harney’s subsequent expedition persisted and is often seen as the beginning of the Northern Plains “Indian Wars.” Harney also informed the Native Americans that he planned to send Warren up the Missouri to survey, and the Natives were to leave the survey party unmolested.
Leaving Fort Pierre on June 28, 1856, Warren steamed on the American Fur Company’s Saint Mary up the Missouri River. They reached the mouth of the Yellowstone River near Fort Union on July 25 and began making their way up that waterway. Traveling overland following the Yellowstone, the going was tough, and Warren reported they had difficulty with their wagons in the “Bad Lands of the Yellowstone.” They reached the mouth of the Powder River in eastern Montana (30 miles northeast of present-day Miles City, MT) in mid-August, which was the furthest upstream the party charted. Warren and his men were far from the first white men to reach the Powder; 50 years earlier in 1806, William Clark and members of the Corps of Discovery, eastbound, camped at the confluence of the Powder and Yellowstone. “Carefully mapping the islands and bends of the river,” Warren and his men made accurate topographical measurements of the Yellowstone River and greatly aided in the knowledge of the region. Leaving the mouth of the Powder River, Warren’s expedition returned down the Yellowstone and then the Missouri, reaching Fort Pierre in early October. Again, Warren returned to winter in Washington to write a report and plan his next adventure.
1857 – Bear Butte or Bust
In May 1857, Secretary of War John B. Floyd ordered Warren to organize an expedition "to ascertain the best route for continuing the military road from Fort Snelling [on the upper Mississippi in Minnesota Territory] to the mouth of the Big Sioux [River at Sioux City, Iowa] to Fort Laramie and the South Pass, by way of the Loup Fork of the Platte; to make also such explorations in the Black Hills, about the sources of the Shyenne [sic] and Little Missouri rivers, as the time and means will permit; and to examine the Niobrara or l'Eau qui Court River, upon your return route, for the purpose of ascertaining its character and resources and the practicability of locating a road along it, leading from the Missouri River to the South Pass, or from Fort Randall to Fort Laramie."10
To complete his mission, Warren brought along his brother Edgar; F.V. Hayden; surgeon Dr. S. Moffitt; meteorologist W.P.C. Carrington; topographers J.H. Snowden and P.M. Engel; and a military escort of 30 men led by Lt. James McMillan.
The expedition got off to a poor start. Lt. McMillan’s men were undisciplined, and Warren reported on the Fourth of July “most of the escort were drunk and insubordinate and 12 of them deserted, carrying off with them two of my horses.” The fact that the men were so undisciplined while still in the presence of a “civilized community” at Sioux City gave Warren “unpleasant forebodings of what might occur … when we should come among our enemies, the Indians.”11
His misgivings aside, Warren had a mission, and his plan was to travel to the mouth of the Loup River (present-day Columbus, NE) and head westward following the Loup. In July 1857, eastern Nebraska proved to be a “sea of mud” and historian Vincent Flanagan noted that “super-human efforts” were made by Warren’s men just to reach to Loup, fighting mud and swollen streams the whole way.12
As the expedition followed the course of the North Fork of the Loup River, they entered Nebraska’s Sand Hills. The problem went from too much water to too little. In the Sand Hills, the water became brackish and undrinkable. Upon reaching the head of the Loup in western Nebraska, Warren wrote,
We have now traced the river from end to end and found the impracticability for almost any purpose so marked that it seems like a great waste of time to have made the exertion we have. Our greatest wish is to get away from it as soon as possible and never return.13
Continuing through the Sand Hills, Warren and his men found an open plain and a Native American trail leading to the Niobrara River. With the Niobrara as a landmark, the expedition was easily able to find their way to the Forts Pierre-Laramie Trail and reach Fort Laramie in late August.
While at the fort, Hayden found time to take geological specimens around Laramie Peak, making up for the late start. He wrote the time “successful even beyond my most sanguine expectations.” Controversy loomed however, when Warren ordered the specimens shipped to the Topographical Bureau instead of the Smithsonian as Hayden preferred. Writing to his friend Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Spencer Fullerton Baird, Hayden confessed he felt like “shooting” Warren. Historian Frank Schubert believes Hayden feared Warren stealing credit for his scientific discoveries. However, Hayden appears to have suffered in silence. Warren seems never to have known of his offence, and he even chose to have Hayden along for the next part of the expedition’s journey.14
Knowing the lateness of the season and wishing to complete the dual mission of exploring the Black Hills and the Niobrara River, Warren made the difficult decision—he greatly feared Indian attack—to divide his party. Warren ordered Lt. McMillan, Dr. Moffitt, and topographer Snowden to head down the Niobrara and wait at longitude 101°30’. Warren, with his brother Edgar; interpreter Morin; Hayden; Carrington; Engel; and 17 men headed northward from Fort Laramie to the Black Hills.
The Black Hills party traveled north, passed the Rawhide Buttes, crossed Old Woman Creek, the South Fork of the Cheyenne River, and followed Beaver Creek to the vicinity of present-day Newcastle, Wyoming. They continued northward and reached Inyan Kara Mountain (in current northeast Wyoming) in mid-September.
From Inyan Kara, Warren had a commanding view of the Bear Lodge Mountains containing the Missouri Buttes, Sundance Mountain, and Warren Peak. He may have even caught a glimpse of Devils Tower (Matȟó Thípila), reporting being “almost in sight of the place where these Indians had plundered Sir George Gore in 1856” on the Belle Fourche River (Cheyenne North Fork).15
At Inyan Kara, the party met with a large group—40 lodges—of Native Americans Warren referred to as “Minikanyes [sic] of the Dakota.” The sudden arrival of the white men did not please the Native Americans, and Warren wrote many of the warriors “were for attacking us immediately, as their numbers would have insured success.”16
According to Warren, “the grounds of their objections to our traversing this region were very sensible, and of sufficient weight,” as the Indians were “it may be said, actually herding” a large group of bison, and feared the presence of the white men would startle them.17 Knowing the importance of the bison to the Plains Indians, Warren felt their concerns were justified and wrote, “... their feelings towards us, under the circumstances, were not unlike what we should feel toward a person who should insist upon setting fire to our barns.”18
In addition to fearing the white men would scare off the bison, the Native Americans protested that the presence of Warren and his men violated the treaty they had made with General Harney. The tribal members claimed that they had given whites permission to travel along the Platte and Missouri Rivers, as well as the Forts Laramie-Pierre Trail. But, beyond this, “no white people should travel elsewhere in their country.”19 The Natives feared Warren was gathering valuable information about the land that could be used against them if the US military should again make war on the Indians.20
To assuage the Indian’s fears, Warren agreed to wait and meet with Chief Bear’s Rib.21 However, after three days of waiting, Bear’s Rib had not shown up to the camp. Further complicating matters for the Warren party, the Wyoming climate bestowed her loving embrace. A two-day long, mid-September, “storm of sleet and snow,” hit the camp. Having little protection from the elements, Warren wrote the weather made things “sufficiently unpleasant,” and contributed to his decision not to press on any further north.22
Leaving Inyan Kara, the Warren party retraced their steps southward 40 miles before turning eastward into the Black Hills with the goal of making it to Bear Butte. F.V. Hayden observed the distinct “elliptical” shape of the Black Hills, a result of their unique geology. This formation created a natural “road” around the perimeter, which Warren noted the Indians and fur traders called the “Race Course” or “Running Road.”23
After two days of travel, Bear’s Rib finally made his appearance, overtaking Warren’s party. Warren and the Húŋkpapȟa chief negotiated most of the day. Warren was determined to press on and reach Bear Butte on the eastern side of the Black Hills. Bear’s Rib reluctantly agreed to accompany Warren part of the way and then return to his people to influence them not to attack. The chief also wished for Warren to relay a message back east. “He [Bear’s Rib] wished me [Warren] to say to the President; and to the white people that they could not be allowed to come into that country; that if the presents sent were to purchase such a right, they did not want them. All they asked of the white people was, to be left to themselves and let alone.”24
The party reached Bear Butte on September 29, 1857. Bear’s Rib departed the expedition and Warren wrote that they saw no Indians after that. From Bear Butte, Warren traveled southeast reaching the Cheyenne River at the mouth of Sage Creek (10 miles west of today’s Wall, SD, and north of Badlands National Park). To get around the Badlands, they traveled up the Cheyenne about 30 miles to the mouth of French Creek. From there, they headed south on the west side of the Badlands to the White River and continued southeastward to the Niobrara River. Reaching the Niobrara, they traveled downstream about 40 miles and found Lt. McMillan’s party. Reunited, the party made its way downstream to Sioux City, Iowa.
1858 - Best Laid Plans
Building on his three successful expeditions of 1855, 1856, and 1857, Warren began to plan big. In November 1858, he wrote to Captain A.A. Humphreys of the Corps of Topographical Engineers detailing a proposed two-year-long expedition to the West.
They would leave Fort Pierre and follow the Belle Fourche River around the northern side of the Black Hills. Upon finding the headwaters of the Belle Fourche in what is now northeast Wyoming, they would proceed over a low divide to the Powder River. Remembering his encounter with the Native Americans in 1857, Warren proposed a backup plan should the Indians not grant them passage along the Belle Fourche. This alternative route would follow the South Fork of the Cheyenne River around the southern side of the Black Hills to Fort Laramie, and then proceed northwestward from Fort Laramie into the Powder River Basin. Once the Powder was reached, they would follow it to its mouth at the Yellowstone – Warren’s furthest point reached in 1856. They would then travel up the Yellowstone River to its confluence with the Tongue River (present-day Miles City, MT). Here, the party would split; one group would follow the Tongue to its source, and the remainder would continue up the Yellowstone to the Big Horn River and then follow the Big Horn River into the mountains. Warren envisioned the parties rendezvousing in the Big Horn Mountains (presumably around today’s Burgess Junction, WY).25
These were indeed big plans. An expedition under the command of Captain William F. Raynolds did leave in the summer of 1859 to explore the uncharted territories of Wyoming and Montana.26 But G.K. Warren was not with them. His father, Sylvanus Warren, died in February 1859, and Warren accepted a position as assistant professor of mathematics at West Point to be near his mother and younger siblings.27
Civil War
The outbreak of the Civil War unsurprisingly occupied Warren’s time. He played a crucial role as a reconnaissance surveyor and commander of a Union brigade during the Peninsula Campaign and Seven Days Battles, as well as leading men at the Second Battle of Bull Run and Antietam. At Gettysburg, Warren played a key role in identifying the defensive position of Little Round Top, and he was promoted to Major General. But Warren’s deliberative nature ran afoul of General Phil Sheridan. Sheridan relieved Warren of command for purportedly moving too slowly at Battle of Five Forks near the end of the War.
After the War, Warren spent 17 years working for the Army Corps of Engineers, engineering the construction of railroads along the Mississippi River. He also fought to reestablish his reputation, which he believed General Sheridan had tarnished. A court of inquiry looked into the matter and found that Sheridan’s relief of Warren was unjustified. Unfortunately for Warren, political pressure from Sheridan and President Grant meant that the court’s findings were not published until after Warren’s death on August 8, 1882, at only age 52.28
Over the course of three expeditions from 1855 to 1857, G. K. Warren charted thousands of miles across the Great Plains. He mapped large sections of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, as well as the Niobrara and the Loup rivers, discovering the latter’s unsuitability for navigation. The first white man to travel overland between Fort Pierre and Fort Kearny, Warren was also one of the first white men to enter the Black Hills, beating Custer to Inyan Kara and Bear Butte by 17 years. Warren worked to maintain peaceful relations with the Native Americans, both out of his own necessity and from his understanding that killing the bison herds was akin to the Indians burning white men’s barns. For all this, it seems fitting that G.K. Warren, the Explorer of Nebraska, would have Warren Peak in the Bear Lodge named in his honor.
Editor's note: Special thanks to the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, whose support helped make the publication of this article possible.
- Footnotes
-
1. Since 2005, there have been formal petitions to rename Devils Tower to ‘Bear Lodge,’ the name used by many Native American tribes. Wyoming’s congressional delegation has repeatedly introduced bills to prevent such changes, creating an ongoing legislative and cultural debate. . See Leo Wolfson, “Lummis, Barrasso Resurrect Bill To Ban Renaming Devils Tower,” Cowboy State Daily, January 9, 2025, cowboystatedaily.com/2025/01/09/lummis-barrasso-resurrect-bill-to-ban-renaming-devils-tower/.
2. The US Air Force placed a nuclear reactor on Warren Peak during the Cold War. It powered a radar early warning system near Sundance, Wyoming. For more on the reactor see: Dave Marcum, “Bombing Wyoming: Operation Fu-Go and the First Intercontinental Missile Attacks on the U.S.,” Presentation at the Rockpile Museum, May 15, 2023, YouTube, 59:31, youtube.com/watch?v=Qa9_OoBmPcs; and “Wyoming History: Sundance Had First Portable Nuclear Reactor In The United States,” Cowboy State Daily, August 23, 2023, cowboystatedaily.com/2023/08/23/wyoming-had-first-us-portable-nuclear-reactor-to-keep-america-safe-from-commies/; and the Crook County Museum in Sundance, WY has an exhibit, crookcountymuseum.org.
3. A different Warren. Wyoming boasted another famous Warren, Francis E. Warren. A Medal of Honor recipient, US Senator, and Wyoming’s first state governor, F.E. Warren lent his name to the military installation in Cheyenne – first known as Fort D.A. Russell (1867-1930), then Fort Warren (1930–1949), and now F.E. Warren AFB (1949–present). But F.E. Warren is not the namesake for the peak 10 miles north of Sundance, WY.
4. After an Indian killed a Mormon immigrant’s cow, the Army at Fort Laramie sent Lt. John Grattan to arrest the offender. The resulting dispute ended with the Native Americans wiping out Grattan’s entire 31-man force. See John D. McDermott, R. Eli Paul, and Sandra J. Lowry, All Because of a Mormon Cow: Historical Accounts of the Grattan Massacre, 1854–1855 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018).
5. James D. McLaird and Lesta V. Turchen, “Exploring the Black Hills, 1855-1875: Reports of the Government Expeditions,” South Dakota History 3, no. 4 (Winter 1973): 366; Vincent J. Flanagan, “Gouverneur Kemble Warren, Explorer of the Nebraska Territory,” Nebraska History 50, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 172.
6. Warren quoted in Flanagan, “Gouverneur Kemble Warren,” 173.
7. This is near present-day Lewellen, NE, at the inlet of Lake McConaughy Reservoir. Ash Hollow is also only four miles away from Windlass Hill. The terrain in the region is very rough. In the 1840s, pioneers following the Oregon Trail on the Great Platte River Road would use a ship’s windlass to lower their wagons down the hill. Later pioneers discovered it was easier to use the Julesburg Cutoff. See R. Eli Paul, Blue Water Creek and the First Sioux War, 1854-1856 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012).
8. Warren quoted in Flanagan, “Gouverneur Kemble Warren,” 175-176.
9. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden continued to explore the West as a geologist. He was on the 1859 Raynolds Expedition and led the 1871 US Geological Expedition into Yellowstone. See F.V. Hayden, Geological Report of the Exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1869), Internet Archive, archive.org/details/GeologicalReportYellowstone/us-geo-1869-RTL011652-LowRes/.
10. Letter from Floyd to Warren, May 6, 1857, in Gouverneur K. Warren, Explorer on the Northern Plains: Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren’s Preliminary Report of Exploration in Nebraska and Dakota, in the Years 1855-’56-’57 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1858; reprint,1981): 12, HathiTrust Digital Library, hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31210003537790.
11. Warren quoted in Flanagan, “Gouverneur Kemble Warren,” 185.
12. Flanagan, “Gouverneur Kemble Warren,” 185.
13. Warren quoted in Flanagan, “Gouverneur Kemble Warren,” 186.
14. Frank N. Schubert, “Troublesome Partnership: Gouverneur K. Warren and Ferdinand V. Hayden on the Northern Plains in 1856 and 1857,” Earth Sciences History 3, no. 2 (1984):143-148, www.jstor.org/stable/24135816.
15. A wealthy Irish nobleman, Sir George Gore spent half a million dollars on a three-year hunting trip to Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana. See Clark C. Spence, “A Celtic Nimrod in the Old West,” Montana The Magazine of Western History 9, no. 2 (Spring 1959): 56-66, JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/4516293; Warren quoted in McLaird and Turchen, 375-76; and Warren, Explorer on the Northern Plains, 30.
16. Warren quoted in McLaird and Turchen, “Exploring the Black Hills,” 375.
17. Warren, Explorer on the Northern Plains,19.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid, 20.
21. “Bear’s Rib,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear's_Rib.
22. Warren quoted in McLaird and Turchen, “Exploring the Black Hills,” 377.
23. While there is no way to know the exact route Warren took though the Black Hills, it is notable that his route preceded Custer’s Black Hills Expedition by 17 years. Warren was at Inyan Kara on September 14, 1857, and made his way through the Black Hills reaching Bear Butte on September 29, 1857. Custer was at Inyan Kara on July 23, 1874, and made his way through the Black Hills, reaching Bear Butte on August 14, 1874. For more on the Custer Expedition see Paul Horsted, “Exploring with Custer,” presentation at the Rockpile Museum, April 19, 2024, video, YouTube, 1:12:33, youtube.com/watch?v=zl8CWRZA9nI; Hayden, Geological Report, 2-3; and Warren, Explorer on the Northern Plains, 19-20.
24. Warren, Explorer on the Northern Plains, 20.
25. Letter to Humphreys from Warren, November 24, 1858, in Warren, Explorer on the Northern Plains, 11.
26. For more on the Raynolds Expedition see James H. Nottage, “Rivers, Mountains and Plains: The Raynolds Expedition of 1859-1860,” WyoHistory.org, May 31, 2023. wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/rivers-mountains-and-plains-raynolds-expedition-1859-1860.
27. Frank N. Schubert, “Introduction,” in Explorer on the Northern Plains, by Gouverneur K. Warren (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1858; reprint, 1981), xxvii.
28. Eric J. Wittenberg, Little Phil: A Reassessment of the Civil War Leadership of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2002), 127-131, Google Books, books.google.com/books/about/Little_Phil.html?id=QgESfyjOi6QC.